Microsoft links Metro theme to jQuery Mobile, Windows Phone

Microsoft Open Technologies has made the Metro style theme available for the jQuery Mobile open source mobile user interface framework, thus fitting Metro to applications running on the Windows Phone 7.5 OS.

Metro has been billed as Microsoft's tablet-style interface for the upcoming Windows 8 OS, but it also can work with Windows Phone. JQuery is a touch-optimized framework leveraging HTML5 and the jQuery JavaScript library.

"The theme enables HTML5 pages to adapt automatically to the Metro design style when rendered on Windows Phone 7.5," said Abu Obeida Bakhach, program manager for Microsoft Open Technologies, in a blog post late last week. This theme allows "websites and HTML5-based mobile applications to use the Metro style," said Microsoft vice president S. Somasegar, in a separate blog post.

The CSS- and JavaScript-based Metro theme adapts to the theme used in Windows Phone and applies styling to jQuery Mobile controls. Mobile HTML5 websites can integrate into the Windows Phone Metro-style experience. "Now, developers can use the new open source Metro-style theme for jQuery Mobile to give their mobile apps and websites the Metro style look and feel, and offer the final users an experience similar to the one they get with native applications," Bakhach said.

Developers can download the theme on Github and use it as NuGet extension package in the Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft Open Technologies, a Microsoft subsidiary announced in April and focused on interoperability, sponsored development of the new Metro theme.

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